Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.
I’m working on a piece for the newspaper about riding a bike. At the risk of giving too much away, I’ll say simply that it’s about going to places and seeing things. Such as these things, seen today:

• ice: It’s been dry for a couple of weeks, but the concrete flood control channels still have water in them, the result of our city’s leaky plumbing. It’s also been cold, so the trickle in the channel is frozen. Ice is fascinating to a warm climate boy like me.
• engineered ecosystems I: A failed experiment – the corn field on the west side of the Rio Grande near the north end of town. Failed because the birds, for whom it was grown, were nowhere to be seen.
• engineered ecosystems II: A success – half a hundred sandhill cranes on the east side of the river, munching corn also grown for them.
• engineered ecosystems III: Another success – half a hundred fishermen and women and kids fishing at the artificial ponds at what we here in Albuquerque call “Tingley Beach.” It has no beach to speak of, and Clyde Tingley is long dead. It was cold. No one was out much on the riverside trail, which is heavily used on any Saturday even 10 degrees warmer than today. But those fisherpeople. Build ’em a pond, stock it with fish and they’re there.